Inductive Bias

Last week I spent several days in Chicago mainly to attend a few meetings at the local Nokia/Navteq office. Though the schedule was pretty packed, a few hours remained to explore the then frosty and windy city:

Top three images: Some impressions of the city. Bottom left: Teddy’s new friend. Bottom right: Situation at ORD when flying out - fortunately both, the airport as well as the airline (Swiss) have quite some experience with challenging weather conditions so that we could leave without too much delay.

As usual I wondered whether there are any Apache people close by. So before flying in I checked our committers map. As there were a few people in that general area I sent a brief heads-up to the greatly under-advertised, private, non-archived, committers only list party@apache.org. In case you’ve never heard about it: The main use case of that list is to provide a means for committers to arrange for meeting up with fellow Apache people and share travel details.

As a result I received a brief list of things to do in Chicago and got to attend a small but really nice meetup. Having a means to get in touch with locals can make such a difference - thanks for the warm welcome! Hopefully next time I’m there weather is as warm - would love to explore the (at least according to my travel guide book) beautiful nature of the great lakes.

General chicago, teddy

It was several years ago that a frequent traveller told me about it being more comfortable and time saving to travel mid-sized distances (e.g. from Berlin to Amsterdam) by train - night train that is - instead of flying. Back then without decent knowledge of which combination of booking early and discount card make prizes of trips by train somewhat comparable to those offered by airlines that wasn’t really an option for me.

It took me years and a conference in Vienna to re-visit to his proposal: Trying to find ways to reduce the amount of times I fly I looked for alternatives. Going by car clearly is not an option as it’s more time consuming and on such long distances also more stressful. Going by regular train seemed like a waste of time as well. So I re-checked the offers for night trains. The idea of going to bed in Berlin and waking up at my destination just seemed too good.

Currently sitting in a CNL to Amsterdam I have to admit that for now this is the most relaxing way to travel I’ve found so far: Get on board, sleep heavenly (though not as comfortable as in your preferred hotel, beds are still ok), get your breakfast brought to bed in the morning. Mix in meeting friendly people (so far maybe I was just lucky) that are either discovering Europe as backpackers (met one from Australia and one from Canada yesterday) or happen to be taking that train as part of their weekly commute.

I think at least for most European cities I’m converted now

General amsterdam, gotocon, teddy

On his trip from SFO back to Europe teddy spent a few days in Amsterdam. He brought back the following pictures of bikes, cheese and the canals:

Going to Amsterdam usually is pretty darn dangerous: I tend to return with some toys added to my collection of puzzles. Somehow I tend to be drawn to the shop called Gamekeeper selling them even when I do not remember the exact address or even just the street name:

Freetime amsterdam, teddy

Before attending O’Reilly Strata there were a few days left to adjust to the different time zone, meet up with friends and generally spend some days in the Greater San Francisco area. As was to be expected, those were way to few days. The weekend was a bit rainy, still packed with visiting China town right after the plane had landed and spending some time at … Finally was taken out to Bucks - the restaurant among software engineers generally known for being the place where VC deals are being made.

Sunday was reserved for visiting some red wood trees - it’s so great driving just a few minutes out of the city and arriving in an area that looks like being set up for a fairy tale movie. With all the mist and with sun coming out here and there the area looked even more bewitched.

On Monday sun finally arrived in the bay - as a result a ferry trip to Sausolito seemed like the optimal thing to do. Unfortunately not enough time to rent a bike an to the "ride the bridge" tour - or get a kajak to go out into the bay. Maybe next time though.

After returning back home, Teddy showed me some pieces of chocolate someone in the US made him adicted to - now it’s not just the tasty swiss one but also the Berkley one I have to find a shop for in Berlin

Freetime, General SFO, teddy

When at Devoxx Teddy went to the city taking a few pictures of the Grote Markt, the Haven as well as the main train station.

Freetime, General antwerp, Devoxx, teddy

Caught Teddy just before the plane took off:

Freetime amsterdam, codebits, Devoxx, teddy

After Apache Con I spent a few days in Lisbon for Codebits. The conference is not developers-only. It is more of a mixture of hacking event, conference, exhibition. Though the location was not optimal for giving presentations (large exhibition hall with now a rather noisy presentation area) the whole event brought quite an interesting mixture of people together in one place in the capital of Portugal.

I had been to Portugal earlier this year, however that was just for recreating and vacation. So this time around I was quite happy to get the chance of seeing some part of the local culture that otherwise I would probably never have gotten access to. Having some loose ties to the Berlin hackers community, to the free software people in Europe but also to pragmatic open source developers what was most astonishing to me was to see the comparably huge amount of systems running Microsoft Windows used by codebits attendees. Talking a bit with locals it seemed like using free software for development is not all that unusual in Portugal, however people tend to wait for problems getting fixed instead of getting involved and actively contributing back.

Mahout codebits, Lisbon, Mahout, teddy

While I was happily attending Apache Con US in Atlanta/GA my teddy had a closer look at the city: He first went to the centennial olympic park, took a picture of the world of coca-cola (wondering what strange kinds of museums there are in the US.

After that he headed over to Midtown having a quiet time in the Piedmont park. And finally had a closer look at the private houses still decorated for Halloween. Seems like it was squirrel day that day: Met more than ten squirrels he told me.

I found quite some impressive pictures of the arts museum on my camera after his trip out – as well as several images taken at the campus of the Georgia tech university. It’s amazing to see what facilities are available to students – especially compared to the equipment of German universities.

Apache Con ApacheCon, Atlanta, teddy

During the past two weeks my teddy was on vacation. As destination he chose to fly to Portugal. One day was reserved for a visit to Lisboa, the capital city of the country. He also took a few really nice pictures there:

On his return, he was no longer alone. Seems like he found a cute little portugese girl friend:



In addition he brought the following image. However he promised that he was not in California, but explained that the bridge actually does exist in Lisboa, being constructed by the same company according to the same blue prints that already were used for Golden Gate bridge:

Freetime Lisboa, teddy, vacation